“You know what I can’t believe?” Doris said. “I can’t believe she brought in that guy from New York to be her partner. After all these years of promising Colin she’d give him the job.”

“That’s Marybeth for you,” Ashley shrugged.

Doris sighed in agreement, and the two of them got into their cars.

After they’d driven off, Pam turned to me and beamed.

“Guess what? We all talked it over while you were in the bathroom, and we want you to join the club!”

“Really?”

“So how about it?”

I have to admit, I was flattered. The last thing I’d been asked to join was Macy’s Pantyhose Club. (Buy ten pair, and you get the eleventh free.) And now that Kandi was abandoning me for the altar, I was definitely in the market for some new friends. Not to mention some free margaritas. So what if Marybeth was a pill? The others were a lot of fun.

And so, in a move I’d live to deeply regret, I said yes.

Chapter 5

Of course, at the time, I didn’t have an inkling of all the PMS crappola that would eventually be hitting my fan.

My biggest concern then was my interview at Union National Bank. It had been ages since I worked with a major corporate client. My last job interview had been with a far less impressive outfit—Big Al’s Moving & Storage Company, for a plum assignment writing Big Al’s Yellow Pages ad.

As I rode up in the elevator of the Union National building the next day, butterflies frolicked gaily in my stomach. I stepped onto the executive floor and found myself in what looked like a British gentlemen’s club: gleaming hardwood floors dotted with Persian rugs, overstuffed leather club chairs, and—in the center of it all—an aristocratic gray-haired receptionist, with a hawklike nose and cheekbones sharp enough to open envelopes.

I approached her desk, an immaculate cherry wood table with absolutely nothing on it except a phone and a vase of perfect roses. I cleared my throat and told her I was there for a ten o’clock meeting with Andrew Ferguson. She looked me up and down, giving me the royal once-over, like Queen Elizabeth inspecting one of her dogs for fleas. I was glad I was wearing my Prada pantsuit.

(Yes, I, Jaine Austen of Bargain Barn fame, actually own a Prada pantsuit, a souvenir of a murder I was involved in last year, one you can read all about in Shoes to Die For, now available in paperback at a bookstore near you.)

If I do say so myself, I looked rather spiffy. Thank goodness Queen Elizabeth couldn’t see that underneath my Prada jacket, my Prada pants were unbuttoned at the waist.